Current coral cover gave no clear next-year record link in four Atlantic and Pacific Reef Check samples in 1998-2018

We tested whether current hard-coral cover predicted a cover record in the next year. We used HeatCRD version 1 and Reef Check records from the Atlantic and Pacific in two periods from 1998 to 2018. Four models used 5,243 records after removal of fixed-effect singletons. They controlled site, country-year, survey month and survey heat. Slopes ranged from -3.08 to +3.84 percentage points of record probability per ten percentage points of coral cover. All four corrected intervals included zero. A low-cover threshold and stricter month and depth matching did not give a clear repeated link. The full baseline frame had next-year matches for 23-55 percent of records. This test does not show that missing records are random. Archive presence is not a field visit. Selected sites, few country clusters, short records and uncertain survey identity limit inference. The package gives source hashes, record extracts, code, all estimates, a figure and independent numerical checks.

coral cover · observation bias · HeatCRD · Reef Check · record availability · marine heatwaves · null result